Authors: Kōbō Abe
The door was heavy steel, nearly half an inch thick, so the burden on its hinges was great. There was a certain trick to opening it. You had to pull it toward you, then push it up diagonally to adjust the hingepin before it would swing open silently and smoothly. I listened, and heard only the rumble of the sea, murmurings of conches, drops of water falling—whether near or far was impossible to say.
It was too quiet. I pushed the door open still farther, went inside, and stood on the cedarwood deck. The insect dealer followed behind, gripping my belt. If what we had just come through were the gangway, this would be the hatch, not the deck. We were on the top landing of the stairs leading down into the hold. There was a damp green smell, and perfect silence. Nothing more. What had happened to the invaders? I felt an uneasy premonition.
I had not yet told the insect dealer, but the entire ship was booby-trapped to guard against trespassers. This very staircase leading down into the hold was a dangerous trap. It appeared to be the only way down, but the boards from the fourth step to the seventh held a nasty surprise: on one side they were fastened down with a spring hinge, while the other side was left free so that anyone putting his weight on them was bound to slip and fall. It was twenty-three feet to the bottom. An unlucky fall could easily prove fatal. The only safe way to go up and down was to use the ladder propped inconspicuously alongside the stairs.
Assuming you managed to pass this first hurdle, you still had to get by the stairs leading up to the bridge, a sort of terrace off the first hold. (I always refer to it as the bridge, although technically it’s my own cabin—the captain’s quarters.) Set foot on those stairs without first pushing the cancel button, and a fusillade of skyrockets will instantly fire. Put a hand on the drawer of my desk, and a spray can of insecticide will go off in your face. Nor would it be wise to show any interest in the bookmark stuck invitingly in my diary: Merely reaching for it would trigger an ultraviolet warning device, sending out a shower of crushed glass I made by grinding up old light bulbs. Individual fragments are as thin as mica and as sharp as razors; once they get in your hair you can’t brush them out, and if you tried to shampoo them out, your scalp would be cut to ribbons.
I had never expected any of this to be put to use. I had thought of it lightly as a sort of protective seal on the ship until the crew officially came on board. What got me started was a small Austrian utility machine that I bought to make duplicate keys. One day I used it to make a tiny screw to fasten on the sidepiece of my glasses. Next I repaired a fountain pen, and then added some parts to a used camera. Gradually it became a consuming passion, and I went around fixing, adding to, and remodeling everything I could lay hands on.
My masterpiece was an automatic air gun. It was no ordinary air gun; apart from a slight thickness of the shaft, it looked exactly like an umbrella. Unfortunately, there was no way to attach a sight, so I was forced to omit that feature. As a result, it could be used only at extremely close range, and never did achieve as much as I hoped in my war on rats—the original purpose for which I’d designed it. As an umbrella, however, it functions admirably. If I ever put it up for sale in that department store rooftop bazaar, it would certainly do better than the water cannon, anyway.
But what if I did inflict injury on a trespasser, I now wondered—would I be legally responsible?
After an interval that might have been two seconds, or twenty, the steel door clanged shut of its own accord, the reverberations conveying a vague sense of immense weight. The insect dealer switched his penlight on, but the shaft of light illuminated nothing; it only tapered off and disappeared, emphasizing the depth of the darkness (the room was 225’ X 100’ X 60’). He cast his voice into the blackness.
“Anybody here?”
“Yes.” The response came bundled in reverberations, and the beam of a flashlight bounced back. “You kept us waiting long enough. Hurry and turn on the lights, please.”
It was the shill, no doubt about it. His voice was cheerily off key, but it had a defiant, cutting edge. Next came the voice of the girl.
“Ooh! It hurts,” she said, but as she was not moaning, I assumed her injuries were minor. It was a relief to know they hadn’t been killed.
Drawn by their voices, the insect dealer took several steps forward, lost his balance and landed heavily on his rear. The beam from his penlight, which had been aimed at the floor, was swallowed up in the darkness.
“Why haven’t you got a banister here, for crying out loud? A person could get killed.” His voice was shrill. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said in a different key, “So it
is
you two. How’d you sneak in here?”
“Hey, it’s Komono!” The girl’s voice was bright. The shill must have said something to her, for she immediately started complaining again about the pain.
“You two are worse than a pair of cockroaches,” said the insect dealer. “How’d you get past the dogs?”
From the swaying shadows beyond the flashlight, the shill shot back, “That’s a fine hello. Let me ask
you,
then—who invited you to come poking your ugly face in here?”
Plainly the three of them were well acquainted. The insect dealer hadn’t leveled with me.
“You’re a fine one to talk,” countered the insect dealer. “I happen to know how you got your ticket—swiped it, didn’t you?”
“Now, now—don’t talk that way. One thing just led to another. We looked all over for you, you know.”
“Oh, you did, huh? Came all the way here to look for me, did you? That was big of you. Come off it.”
“As long as we pay the admission fee it’s okay, isn’t it?”
“There are certain qualifications.”
“Who’s asking you, Komono? Butt out.”
“Sorry, but I’ve been officially hired on by the captain here.”
I was pleased to hear myself introduced as the captain right from the start. Was the insect dealer genuinely taking my part?
“Captain?” said the shill. “Oh, right. He’s selling boat tickets, so he’s a captain.”
“Correct. I
am
the captain.” Better take a firm stand here. “And since this is a rather special ship, crew members
do
need some rather special qualifications.”
“What are Komono’s qualifications, may I ask?” The girl’s voice was tinged with sarcasm. “Ooh, it hurts… .”
“He’s sort of a combined adviser and bodyguard, you could say. Are you in a lot of pain?”
“My ankle is killing me.”
The shill’s high-pitched, high-speed voice cut in: “Well, imagine that. With Komono your bodyguard, we’ll all have to stay on our toes, won’t we? But you know, Captain, if it’s a bodyguard you want, then you ought to take a look at my qualifications too. Whatever I may lack in strength I can make up for in combat experience, I assure you.”
The girl spoke again. “Save the fighting till after the lights are on, please. What’s the matter with you, leaving me to suffer in the dark like this?”
“The young lady does have a point; it would be nice to get the lights on,” the shill conceded. “And she does seem to have sprained her ankle.”
The young lady, he had called her. A curious yet altogether old-fashioned and charming sort of appellation. It could have been simply a nickname, yet it bore a certain air of formality that rekindled my flickering hopes. Although for all I knew, that might be exactly how he intended for me to react. Perhaps this was more of his “fishing” gambit—a mere professional habit.
“There’s no feeling at all in the toes,” she said. “I think I may have broken the bone.”
“That stairway has a couple of rotten boards in it,” said the shill. “I wrenched my back too. You two had better watch out. Fall the wrong way and you’ll be lucky to get off with a fracture.”
Very well. There was no turning back now, anyway; I might as well accede to their request and switch on the lights. The switch was on an infrared remote-control device hanging from my belt. I traced along the vertical row of five buttons with my finger, tapped the top one lightly, and slid it to the right. Instantly the lights came on—fifty-six fluorescent lights, all blinking into action at once. However often I witness it, the drama of that moment never fails. Darkness itself has no spatial dimensions: the black expanse of a starless sky and the confinement of covers pulled over one’s head are equally dark. Perhaps that explains why images we conjure in the dark seem constricted and miniature: people become dwarfs; landscapes, potted plants. All the more reason why seeing the full aspect of the quarry interior come springing into view is as great a shock as if a mighty range of mountains had jumped full-blown out of an egg. In some ways it’s like gazing at a three-dimensional aerial photograph, but the scale is far greater.
Towering blue space. Massive stone walls intersecting sharply, as if sliced with a knife. Numberless horizontal lines, like marks left by the teeth of a comb—the signature of the power stonecutter blade. The walls do not appear to be even parallelograms but seem rather to undergo a certain curvature, as if falling in toward the center, probably an effect of the uneven light cast by the wall light fixtures.
When you focus on particulars, things shrink and miniaturize again: the thirty-two storage drums to my right in the corner of the hold were like scales on a carp; the shill, staring open-mouthed at the ceiling, was no bigger than my thumb. Beside him, sitting at his feet with her arms around her knees, was the girl, the size of my pinkie. She too was sweeping her eyes across the ceiling, from end to end. They were both dressed exactly as I had last seen them on the store rooftop—only the girl’s hair was again short. Her own hair became her far better than the wig.
“Incredible.” The insect dealer was backed up flat against the wall, barely able to speak. He seemed afraid of heights. “I had no idea it was so huge,” he said. “This place is like a sports stadium. You could fit five tennis courts in here.”
“This is just one small part.” Their stunned looks revived my spirits. “My preliminary surveys indicate there are at least eighteen other holds this size. In that wall over there to the right, past that row of storage drums, there’s a narrow opening between the pillar and the wall—see it? That’s the passageway to the next hold. And on the upper left over there, that area hollowed out like a terrace is my cabin. There’s another hole in there that you crawl through to reach another hold, and you see the place is actually a vast honeycomb of—”
“What’s that thing over there?” interrupted the shill, pointing his chin toward the left-hand wall. It scarcely needed pointing out; one’s eyes traveled there automatically, drawn by the gleam of white.
“That? That’s the toilet.”
“The toilet? You mean that’s the john? That’s where you go?”
“The design’s a little unusual, but the water pressure is terrific.”
“Doesn’t it feel a little strange taking a crap right out in the open like that?”
The girl clapped her hands. “Wow,” she said. “Listen to that echo.”
The insect dealer looked up, attentive to the reverberations. “If you tried singing in here, you’d sound like a pro,” he said.
“We’ll pay our passage, of course,” said the shill. “This is worth a lot. Nobody’s asking for a free ride. We’ll talk it over with you and pay a fair price.” He moistened three fingers and rubbed them on his forehead as if performing some magic rite, then added as an afterthought, “Before I forget it, Komono, you still owe me my fee for sales promotion.”
Ignoring this, the insect dealer bent down to inspect the stairs. “There’s nothing rotten here,” he said. “It’s all in perfect shape.”
I grabbed his elbow and pulled him back. “Watch out! It’s a trap. This way down, over here.”
The ladder was propped up in such a way that it could easily be mistaken for part of the scaffolding. I started down first, and immediately regretted not having let the insect dealer take the lead. Too late. The shill came striding over, heels clicking on stone; he grabbed the ladder and began to shake it.
“So that’s the way it was, eh? You knew about the danger all along and did nothing to warn us. It’s
your
fault the young lady got hurt.”
My position was highly disadvantageous. Was he planning to use violence? In any case, it wouldn’t do to betray weakness.
“I had no obligation to warn you of anything. You, sir, are in the wrong for breaking and entering.”
The insect dealer leaned down from above the ladder, showing rodentlike teeth. “All right, you two,” he said. “Break it up. In any quarrel, both sides are at fault.”
“This isn’t a quarrel,” said the shill. What was that supposed to mean? He went on shaking the ladder. “I’m just trying to help. Two injured people is enough. We certainly wouldn’t want anything to happen to the captain.”
The girl tossed in an irrelevant remark. “Is the stone in these walls really blue, or does it just look that way?” Sitting all alone in the center of the vast stone room, arms clasped around one knee, she was as conspicuous as a tin can in the center of a soccer field. I’d heard that the female sex took cold easily; would she be all right, sitting directly on the cold stone floor all this time? If her ankle was sprained, there wasn’t much else she
could
do. I found her pose unbearably provocative.
“It really is blue,” I told her. “That’s why it’s called waterstone. Maybe you’ve heard of it. When it’s polished it shines like marble, but the shine doesn’t last long. When it dries out, the surface turns powdery.”
The shill let go of the ladder and stepped back, adopting a neutral stance. The insect dealer started down the ladder, calling out to the girl as he descended:
“How are you doing? Pain any better?”
“No,” she shouted back.
His feet were almost to my head. There were still three rungs below me, but I jumped to the floor. The shock of landing was translated into bunches of needles hammered into my knee; I staggered, and the shill held me up. The insect dealer slipped past me with a smile and a pat on the shoulder, heading straight for the girl.